Abstract-Surfactant-assisted growth and properties of rare-earth arsenide InGaAs nanocomposites for terahertz generation

R. Salas1, S. Guchhait1, K. M. McNicholas1, S. D. Sifferman1, V. D. Dasika1, D. Jung2, E. M. Krivoy1, M. L. Lee2 and S. R. Bank1


Appl. Phys. Lett. 108, 182102 (2016); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4948581

We explore the effects of surfactant-mediated epitaxy on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of fast metal-semiconductor superlattice photoconductors. Specifically, application of a bismuth flux duringgrowth was found to significantly improve the properties of superlattices of LuAs nanoparticles embedded in In0.53Ga0.47As. These improvements are attributed to the enhanced structural quality of the overgrownInGaAs over the LuAs nanoparticles. The use of bismuth enabled a 30% increase in the number of monolayers of LuAs that could be deposited before the InGaAs overgrowth degraded. Dark resistivityincreased by up to ∼15× while carrier mobility remained over 2300 cm2/V-s and carrier lifetimes were reduced by >2× at comparable levels of LuAs deposition. These findings demonstrate that surfactant-mediated epitaxy is a promising approach to enhance the properties of ultrafast photoconductors for terahert generation.